At the edge of a wood, one glittering frosty morning, she saw shadows hanging from the trees, saw the emaciated rictuses of hanged men nobody had any thought of burying. And very high up, in the sunlit blue of the sky, a flock of migratory birds was slowly melting away, accentuating the silence with the echo of their noisy cries.

The heavy and syncopated breathing of this Russian world no longer terrified her. She had learned so much since she began her journey. She knew that in a railway carriage or on a farm wagon it was practical to carry a bag stuffed with straw, with a few pebbles right at the bottom. This was what the bandits would snatch in their nocturnal raids. She knew that the best place on the roof of a railway carriage was the one near the ventilation hole: it was to this opening that ropes were attached, which enabled you to get down and climb up again quickly. And when by good fortune she found a place in a crowded corridor, she would not be surprised to see a frightened child being passed from hand to hand toward the exit by the people piled on the ground floor. The ones crouched near the door would open it and hold the child above the footboard while it did its business. This passing down the line seemed rather to amuse them: they smiled, touched by this little creature wordlessly allowing itself to be handled in this way, moved by its very natural urge in this inhuman universe… No surprise either when whispering was heard above the clatter of the rails in the night: they were communicating the death of a passenger, lost deep among this confusion of lives.

Only once in the course of this long journey, punctuated by suffering, blood, illness, mud, did she believe she had caught a glimpse of a modicum of serenity and wisdom. She had already reached the far side of the Urals. On the way out of a village half consumed by a fire she saw several men sitting on a bank scattered with dead leaves. Their pale faces, turned toward the mild late autumn sun, radiated a blissful calm. The peasant who was driving the cart jerked his head and explained softly, "Poor people, there are a dozen of them wandering round here now. Their asylum was burnt down. Oh, yes, madmen, you know."